Steven Vose, director of the Jain Studies Program, recently discussed his research at the 20th Anniversary Jaina Studies Workshop: History and Current State of Jaina Studies. Vose’s presentation was titled “From Jainology to Jain Studies…and Back? Toward a Dialogic Approach to Scholarly Engagement with Jain Communities.”
He discussed how “lived religions” approaches have reshaped “Jainology” into “Jain Studies” over the last 30 years in the American academy. Below is a summary of his discussion.
Focusing on the practices, statements, texts and objects which Jains themselves engage in and use, scholars argued these approaches better describe what it means to be Jain than previous studies that investigated doctrines, philosophies, etc., as found in canonical scriptures and intellectual works.
Anthropological and historical studies of Jains have sought to describe the Jain traditions in ways recognizable to Jains themselves. However, some groups of Jains, especially those in the diaspora, have expressed uneasiness about the state and nature of this style of scholarship, expressing a preference for scholars to study Jainism rather than Jains themselves. That is, they would prefer scholars focus on the study of abstract doctrines and philosophies, especially as they may address contemporary global issues.
This presents scholars of the “lived religions” approach with the ethical challenge of how to address the changing dynamics within Jain communities and between communities and scholars. Is it possible to do justice both to the demands of historicist and phenomenological studies while engaging with Jain community interests in scriptural and philosophical studies, which may be far from the everyday experiences of many other Jains?
Attending to the problems of doing so may help scholars to recognize latent forms of Orientalism in our work, including ways that the lived religions approach remains predicated on a “world religions” epistemological model that has been heavily critiqued in recent studies.
By refiguring the lived religions approach toward a dialogical model of writing and speaking we may begin to develop an academic platform for engaging Jain communities’ interests in tenets, doctrines and philosophies as new forms of praxis.
Such re-centering may help scholars of Jainism become more responsive to new gender and class dynamics that exist within Jain communities in India and in the diaspora, as we continue to ask the vital question of who has the power to represent Jains and Jainism.
Such an approach could also help scholars to make concerns about gender and class audible and sensible to Jain communities looking to connect their tradition to cosmopolitan and diasporic contexts.
To learn more about the workshop, click here.
